Not burnt yet, but getting closer every day

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Standards

So, I remember a time growing up when if your mother asked why you did something incredibly stupid and the answer almost all kids gave was “all the other kids were doing it” and then you’d get the standard response of “if they jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?”

Which brings me to my current rant. All those years of parental wisdom of not just following the herd for the sake of following the herd. And now, in the infinite wisdom of these high performance EMS liars disciples, and we all need to do all these “standards” simply because they’re standards. And when you ask them, why are they standards, they reiterate that they’re standards and when really pressed they’ll tell you the rest of the industry is doing it all as well.

So, Mr. couldn’t hack it as a paramedic EMS manager, you’re telling me that because all the other acolytes experts in chicanery high performance EMS say that we need to do A, B, or C then we do? Where’s the proof? Where’s the science? Where’s the evidence? Where’s the proof that what you’re doing doesn’t violate the principle of primum non nocere?

We pretend to be scientists, and if Rogue Medic has taught us nothing else we should aim to be that, but, if we’re capable of nothing more than circular logic that is at best faulty, then are we even worthy of pretending to be that? We should all be ashamed of ourselves for putting our patients, our communities, even our families at risk just so we can follow these standards.

Maybe someday, we’ll come to our senses, get out of this 80’s mindset and start thinking about something other than “me”. I mean, it’s been 20+ years since the me decade. Maybe it’s time to do like Burned Out Medic, and think about others. Just once. Maybe…